


New Light

by spidey_mood



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack, Eventual Romance, Fluff, Humor, IronStrange, M/M, Peter Parker is so done with them, Stephen has a crush on Tony, Tony is in Denial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-13 21:47:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28660431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spidey_mood/pseuds/spidey_mood
Summary: Tony couldn't stand Stephen Strange's attitude. He wanted to strangle him after the last meeting.But then Strange... smiled.And Tony almost lost it!
Relationships: Tony Stark/Stephen Strange
Comments: 2
Kudos: 89





	New Light

_Fuck Strange!_

_Fuck him and his high-and-mighty attitude! Who does he think he is to refuse my ideas!_

Tony stormed out into the hall, practically fuming. He and Strange were butting heads in the last briefing. Their latest mission ended well, but of course, Stephen Strange had to have a different opinion than Tony’s.

Ever since their clash on the donut ship all those years ago, Tony and Strange never seemed to agree about anything. Mainly, their magic-vs-technology debate was an ongoing discussion, for they couldn’t agree which approach would be better to handle the villain of the week. That’s why when Strange decided to overhaul all of Tony’s suggestions, the latter decided that staying in that meeting was useless – especially considering Rogers had agreed with every word coming out of the sorcerer’s mouth.

Tony went to the kitchen and started the coffee machine; the only thing to keep him from boiling over Strange’s attitude is a hot cup of coffee. While he waited for it to cool down enough not to burn his mouth, he thought about how, throughout the whole time of knowing Strange, the man was this stoic, uptight sorcerer who never laughed, or even smiled but was always too serious and superior to those around him. _Or maybe he’s just like this when it’s about business? That’s the only time we meet._

But the most annoying part about him was how he just _knew_ that he’s right about everything. And yes, sometimes (most times) he was. But that didn’t mean that Tony was necessarily wrong. There was more than one way to be right, dammit!

Cup in hand, Tony leaned his hip on the counter facing the door to the kitchen. At the apparent end of the meeting, his teammates began filling the kitchen, eyes immediately roaming around to find anything edible. Peter came in first, sporting a bright red bruise over his eyes, the result of their latest fight, where Spider-man got distracted by protecting a civilian and missed the debris flying his way. He went to the fridge and picked out a can of coke before occupying the space next to him.

Tony was half-listening to his protege’s rambling while the rest walked in. Hope was followed by Scott, who was animatedly telling her about what he and his daughter – Casey? Cassie? Chloe? – were doing over the weekend. Then came Steve and Nat, the latter focusing on something on her phone while nodding along to whatever the soldier was saying. More people filled the kitchen but Tony was focused on Peter telling him about his upcoming trip to the planetarium, so he missed it when Strange and Sam walked into the room. And it was a sight that almost made him choke on his drink.

There shouldn’t be a reason to make Strange and Sam walking and chatting so surprising, if it weren’t for the fact that the wizard was laughing!

Stephen Strange, the stiff, solemn wizard with a stick up his ass, was laughing with Sam, the kind of laughter that made his shoulders shake, his face twist in mirth, and eyes gleam with unshed tears. That was a sight so new to Tony, he didn’t hear the spiderling next to him asking him if he was alright. But he wasn’t alright! The wizard was laughing!

And… Damn! It looked really fucking good on him.

The open glee on the doctor’s face let Tony see the other man in a completely different light. A new light, that left him in awe of what he was seeing. He knew the doctor was handsome, obviously. But this was a whole new look. One that left him confused over the fact that he was excited to see Strange like this more often.

 _Jesus, not him!_ Tony thought as a weird feeling twisted in his gut. The kind of feeling accompanied by deep breaths, a knot in his throat, and the inability to move his eyes away from the sorcerer. And of course, Peter noticed, because Tony actually heard him asking, “Mr. Stark, why are you staring at Doctor Strange?”

“What?” With a bit of effort, Tony managed to shift his focus over to the kid currently giving him suspicious looks. “I was not staring at Strange.”

“Yes, you were. I saw it!” Peter was on the verge of drawing everyone’s attention to their conversation with how loud he was talking.

“Don’t be silly, Peter,” Tony said as he pushed himself off the counter and put his empty cup in the sink. He had to stop this conversation before it headed straight towards embarrassment. “I’m going to my workshop to clear my head after this disastrous day. Don’t join me.”

Tony moved quickly towards his workshop and made sure he doesn’t make eye contact with the doctor, who was giving him weird looks of his own.

Once inside the safety of his workshop, Tony exhaled a long, deep breath as he slumped on a desk chair. He couldn’t let a brief view of Strange smiling brightly linger too much in his mind. It shouldn’t be that important. As devilishly good-looking as he was, Strange was still an annoying stick in the mud, and he wanted nothing more to do with him than team business. The man only smiled, for fuck’s sake! He won’t think about him anymore.

Three weeks later, Tony was still thinking about him.

Strange’s increasingly frequent visits to the newly finished compound were leaving a bittersweet effect on the inventor; sure, this new joy Strange display was a good change from being grave all the time, but it made something unwanted bloom in Tony’s chest. And he hated having to keep thinking about the other man who was being more and more present around him these days. All due to a stupid smile, which was rare enough to flip Tony’s equally stupid emotions.

What’s worse was that Tony and Stephen’s interactions were getting longer and more frequent, and Stephen couldn’t help but notice a shift in the engineer’s behavior towards him. What used to be thinly masked annoyance turned into deliberate indifference and jumpiness. The previous form of their relationship – or lack of one, for a fact – used to puzzle Stephen, seeing as he had tried to keep their interactions professional, not hostile.

But it appears as though Tony’s intentions turned into avoiding him. For what reason, Stephen wasn’t sure. He had given the engineer no motive to drive him away. If anything, Stephen embarrassingly admits, he was trying to drive him… closer. Although, he knows his efforts suggested otherwise, and they appeared more dismissive than not.

But he couldn’t help but wonder why Tony’s reactions had changed, while Stephen’s behavior hadn’t. Whatever. He would stop thinking about him.

A week later, Stephen was still thinking about him.

That’s why he ended up in Tony’s workshop, a bag of burgers in his hand, one week later. Tony had called him to ask if he can check some readings which looked like dimensional energy that his scanners couldn’t recognize. And Stephen had taken that task as a chance to break some newly-formed ice between the two.

“Hey,” Stephen called out as he stepped inside the spacious workshop, but couldn’t see the inventor immediately. He set the food on the nearest bench and walked deeper toward the cluster of metal decorating the middle of the room. “Stark, where are you?”

“Over here.” The engineer stumbled in from an adjoining room, which Stephen could see through the doorway was a computer lab. He could also see that Tony’s legs had wires wrapped around them up to his calves. He was jumping around, one end of a wire clutched in his hand as he tried to free himself from that web. Stephen thought his host hadn’t even noticed who he was talking to. “Fucking DUM-E and his disasters,” Tony grumbled while pulling on a wire around his left ankle.

Stephen watched the scene with barely concealed amusement, while the engineer wobbled on one foot. His amused grin turned into a deep, rumbling laugh as Tony hit his hip on the side of a bench, ending up on the floor in a heap of grumbles and wires.

Stephen lost all control on his laughter as Tony sat halfway up and stared owlishly ahead of him, clearly disoriented. A few blinks later, he turned his sights onto Stephen, hysterically shaking with tears in his squinted eyes. _Just like that day in the kitchen_ , Tony thought as his lips tugged up into a smile that he tried hard to hide. He propped his elbow on his thigh and leaned his face on his fist, still watching the chuckling sorcerer.

It took Stephen a minute to reign in his laughter. He turned to the man still seated on the ground and almost completely sobered up, except for a pleased little smile left on his lips. “What?” He asked as he busied his trembling hands with straightening his dark blue jumper, self-conscious now that he noticed Tony’s eyes fixed on him with a delighted glint in his eyes.

Tony shrugged. “If I’d known falling on my butt would get you to laugh like that, I would’ve done it months ago.”

Another chuckle escaped Stephen, then he said, “Falling on your butt is a good start, I guess.” He walked towards the other man and squatted next to him with regained confidence and a smirk. “Maybe you didn’t even have to fall. If you’d tried hard enough we could’ve avoided it altogether.”

“I must confess: it was a delightful sound and I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”

Stephen tried to hide a blush creeping up his face by turning his focus to the floor, accompanied by a little smile that Tony was starting to look forward to. He looked back up with slight mischief dancing in his pale blue eyes and said, “How about we look at those readings now and go out for coffee later?”

“I wouldn’t mind that at all.” Tony grinned and got off the floor with Stephen’s help before removing the web of wires from around his ankles. Then they got to work.

Two weeks later when Peter wandered into the kitchen and found the two of them kissing next to the counter, he had to blink a few times and clear his throat to grab their attention. When they did turn to him with dopey smiles, it took him a few seconds to say, “So is that why you were staring at Doctor Strange the other day?”

Tony responded to Stephen’s confused stare with a broad grin and a kiss to the cheek. “Guilty.”

**Author's Note:**

> Leave kudos and a comment! ❤


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